I was busy working at my desk yesterday morning when I received an IM from my daughter who still lives in Southern California informing me that they had just been hit by a fairly big earthquake. During the years my husband and I had lived in Southern California we had experienced many earthquakes including two major ones – the Northridge Quake on January. 17, 1994 with a magnitude of 6.7 and before that the Whittier Narrows Quake on October 01, 1987 with a magnitude of 5.9. Of course there were many others, but these two affected my family specifically.

Actually residing in the area you tend to become blasé—if you live in California you have to, after all earthquakes are often a part of everyday living. But, it gave me pause for thought regarding home exchangers. Here we are at the end of July—there must be thousands of home exchanges currently taking place in California and I bet virtually none of the participants had ever encountered an earthquake in their lives before.

I realize it could be a difficult subject to broach without scaring off potential home exchange partners, but clearly written advice and directions covering how guests living in your exchange home should react to and deal with an earthquake should almost certainly be left in an obvious place. Here is a link to a very useful  “What to Do After an Earthquake” List provided by the Red Cross.